Part of the the second questionnaire for the HTML Writers
Guild's Accessibility Guidelines Implementation project
asked the participants to evaluate the W3C's WAI
Guidelines for Page Authors section by section, and assign
a rating to each guideline:
1 - Strongly agree
2 - Agree with most of it
3 - Ambivalent
4 - Disagree with some of it
5 - Strongly Disagree
The following results were compiled from the surveys:
1. Frames 1.09 - Strongly agree
2. Images and Image Maps 1.5 - Agree
Links 1.5 - Agree
4. User-Input Forms 1.58 - Agree
5. Style and Structure 1.65 - Agree
6. Applets and Scripts 2.0 - Agree with most of it
7. If All Else Fails 2.06 - Agree with most of it
8. Audio and Video 2.36 - Agree with some of it
9. Tables 2.6 - Ambivalent
In other words, nearly every web designer responding agreed with
the W3C's guidelines on frames, and the most controversial
sections were those on the use of tables (which recommends the
use of HTML 4's more advanced, and complex, table structuring)
and multimedia (which require transcripts and SMIL).
These results can be used as a measure of how the typical web
developer, when confronted with April 14, 1998 page author
guidelines, will react to them. While it is not expected that
most authors will automatically accept all the recommendations,
it behooves the WAI project to produce guidelines that are
palatable to the average, well-meaning designer -- because if
they read them and reject them, the battle itself is lost
right there.
More details and further information will be coming soon, as
analysis continues. The AGI homepage is at:
http://www.hwg.org/opcenter/projects/agi/
--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Board member, HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org/
Virtual Dog Show Co-Coordinator http://www.dogshow.com/
MLists Mailing List Service http://www.mlists.com/